A little before my time, but some interesting photos:
http://www.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/wwi/introduction/
David
http://www.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/wwi/introduction/
David
I believe the bikes in photo 20 are Douglases. a horozontally opposed twin, I think they were 350 cc. with a 2 speed gearbox. the army models didn't have a clutch but the civilian variant did.British bikes I think were Triumphs
Here is a picture of my Grandfather ( fag in mouth ) and a Douglas. Picture taken at Narborough Aerodrome.
TWN Triumph Werks Nuremburg. Triumph was started by a German immigrant Siegfried Bettemann. He started out making bicycles and moved into motorcycle and car production. He chose the name Triumph because it pretty much a universal word understood in many languages. Eventually he was elected Lord Mayor of Coventry in 1913. The pre-1936 history of Triumph is interesting, Ivor Davies and Harry Louise cover it pretty well in their respective books. It gets glossed over in later books which prefer to concentrate on the period after the motorcycle production is sold off to Jack Sangster who moved Edward Turner from Ariel. The rest as they say is history.A friend in Adelaide not a Vincent man, I told him about this site he rang me a hour back and he said the same Douglas. but he told me Triumphs at that time were also made in Germany?